…Contained in this major dump are several thousand private forum messages, personal emails, internal organization notes, names, phone numbers, home addresses and other information on all of their members and supporters. It’s time for these cowardly suit and tie white supremacists to sleep with one eye open. Scared much?

In addition to finding the usual racist rants and interactions with other white power groups, we also found a disturbingly high amount of members who are also involved in campaigning for Ron Paul. According to these messages, Ron Paul has regularly met with many A3P members, even engaging in conference calls with their board of directors. Ron Paul’s racist politics and affiliations are already well known, being viciously anti-immigrant, anti-abortion and against gay marriage — not to mention having authored the racist “Ron Paul Papers” and receiving financial support from other white power groups (pictured with Don Black from stormfront.org). Hard to believe Ron Paul draws some support from the left and the occupation movements, especially now that it is confirmed Ron Paul hangs out with straight up racist hate groups.

We put extra effort in ruining the life of A3P webmaster Jamie Kelso. On top of being on the board of directors of A3P, former $cientologist, and high ranking Ron Paul organizer, he also is the account owner of german nazi forums and store nsl-forum.org, rhs-versand.com.

This claim has been circulated many places on the web, but I have yet to see specific messages to back up the claims.

The data dump is here for those who want to do their own investigation.

I don’t think anyone is going to mistake me for a Ron Paul apologist. I’ve been critical of Paul for various reasons, including but not limited to the issues raised by “the newsletter controversy.” Believe this: If I find anything credible anywhere directly connecting Paul to A3P and organizations of its type, I’ll shout it from the rooftops.

I’ve only spent a few hours researching the dump, running searches on strings I would expect to shed light on the claims above. There’s a lot of data to sift through, so what I’ve found so far may very well not be the final word on the subject.

Those two things said, I’ve found nothing really substantiating the two claims in the communique quote above. To wit:

A “disturbingly high amount of members” of A3P “are also involved in campaigning for Ron Paul.”

This is a pretty fuzzy claim in the first place, insofar as “disturbingly high” is a subjective evaluation and “involved in campaigning for” can mean a lot of things.

What I found were several references to A3P members attending Paul campaign events; a couple of references to A3P members talking with low-level Paul volunteers whom the A3P people perceived as “with us” or “pro-White;” and one suggestion that a film/video guy who had done work for the Paul campaign be approached about doing the same kind of work for A3P.

None of the campaign events mentioned were portrayed as Paul intentionally addressing A3P-type audiences — it was stuff like “we went to see Paul speak at CPAC” and “we went to Paul’s GOP convention rally in Minneapolis” and so on.

“Ron Paul has regularly met with many A3P members, even engaging in conference calls with their board of directors.”

The closest thing I found to Paul “meeting” with A3P members were references like “managed to get my picture taken with Paul when I attended the Minneapolis convention rally.”

I found references to A3P’s board of directors, and I found references to conference calls, but I found no references to Paul or his campaign being involved in said conference calls.

Does this mean those two claims are false? NO, it doesn’t. I may have missed something. Like I said, it’s a lot of stuff and I’ve only spent a little time sifting through it.

But those claims are strong enough that the burden of proving them falls on those making them. If the material to substantiate the claims is there, someone who can find it needs to highlight it and point it out instead of just leaving it buried down in the pile of garbage it’s embedded in.

Here’s the picture I get from my limited swim through the A3P sewer:

The A3P types consider the Paul movement, and the wider “paleo” movement (other referenced people, pubs and groups in the dump included Pat Buchanan, Thomas diLorenzo, The American Conservative magazine, the John Birch Society, et. al), to be “implicitly pro-White” (their terminology) and are attempting to build a “bridge” (their terminology) between those movements and “explicitly pro-White” (their terminology) groups including (named in the dump) A3P, White News Network, Stormfront, et. al.

I don’t think that belief on the part of A3P types is entirely unreasonable, given that the Rothbard/Rockwell “paleo strategy” which Paul used to raise money in the 80s and 90s was intended to specifically cater to such tendencies.

On the other hand, I think the A3P types are probably:

Under-estimating the extent to which Rothbard, Rockwell and Paul were using the “paleo strategy” to cynically exploit them — suckering them for political “seed money” and so forth — as opposed to genuinely make common cause with them; and

Seriously over-estimating the extent to which the now-existing Paul movement, which is not, for the most part, a product of the “paleo strategy,” is composed of people likely to be sympathetic to the A3P-type fringe.

So far, I’m not seeing anything that constitutes a serious indictment of Paul, his campaign, or the movement surrounding his campaign — or at least nothing above and beyond other long-known plausible indictments of any or all of the three.

But, once again, this is just my initial impression, based on limited time and limited skills for digging through the dump. If anyone else is finding or seeing anything I’m missing or mis-interpreting, by all means let me know in comments, via contact form, etc.

As a side note, while I consider myself a member of Anonymous (expect us!) and while I’m happy to see A3P exposed, I was not involved in this operation nor did I have any foreknowledge of it.

If anyone has found more incriminating information in the data dump to back up the way it was characterized in the hackers’ message, please put sourced data in the comment section here.

In regards to some of the longer standing claims,

“Ron Paul’s racist politics and affiliations are already well known, being viciously anti-immigrant, anti-abortion and against gay marriage”

Ron Paul is NOT anti-woman. Dr. Paul is a licensed physician who practiced obstetrics and gynecology prior to entering politics, assisting in the delivery of more than 4,000 babies over the course of his medical practice. He does personally hold socially conservative Christian values and believes that life begins at conception, but unlike many others in the Republican party he believes the federal government has no right to impose his socially conservative values on the entire nation. Dr. Paul consistently opposes a federal ban on abortion and believes quite reasonably that the question should be left up to the states (video here and here). Dr. Paul voted against the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, a bill designed to criminalize the transportation of pregnant minors across state lines with the intention of the minor obtaining an abortion. Dr. Paul voted against the misleadingly titled Population Planning Bill, a bill designed to forbid dispersal of aid funds to international women’s health groups that also perform abortions even though they are already prohibited from using those funds to cover abortion services. Dr. Paul also voted against the equally misleadingly titled Child Custody Protection Act, another bill intended to prohibit the transportation of a minor across state lines to avoid parental notification laws and obtain access to abortion services. Those are pretty progressive politics for a socially conservative pro-life Christian.

Ron Paul is NOT anti-gay. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell proclaimed, “[w]ithout Ron Paul in this race, we would never hear one sensible thing said about marriage equality on the presidential debate stage… and no American politician is in a position to change more minds about marriage equality than Ron Paul. He is not speaking to the converted; he is speaking to conservative Republicans, he is speaking to evangelical Christians, he is going into the halls of the staunchest opponents of marriage equality in this country and he is telling them a truth so clear and so powerful that he is surely changing minds.” Dr. Paul opposes a federal ban on gay marriage, and believes “[a]ll voluntary associations, whether they’re economic or social, should be protected by the law.” In fact he doesn’t just believe it, he expressed it on Fox News at a Republican presidential debate broadcast when he would have had much to gain politically from pandering to evangelical homophobia. Dr. Paul voted against the Same-Sex Marriage Resolution, a 2006 joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment providing that marriage in the U.S. consists only of the union of a man and a woman and that federal and state constitutions can not be construed to require marriage or legal incidents of marriage be conferred in other unions. Dr. Paul voted to repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. When interviewed by arch-conservative John Lofton on his evangelical right-wing radio program The American View, Ron Paul eloquently defended a position of tolerance for people of all sexual orientations in a situation when it would have been politically beneficial for him to confirm the bigoted views of the listening audience. LOFTON: “Let’s shift gears here to another topic: Homosexuality. Do you believe it’s a sin?” PAUL: “I’m not as judgmental about that, probably because of my medical background.” LOFTON: “Do you believe that God says it’s a sin?” PAUL: “Well, I believe a lot of people understand it that way, but I think everybody’s God’s child too, so I have trouble with that.” Repent America, an evangelistic organization in the extreme theocratic right wing that is “focused on the public proclamation of the Gospel to further the Kingdom of God”) have even used this interview in attack ads against him because he does not believe homosexuality is a sin.

Ron Paul is NOT anti-black. Nelson Linder, President of the Austin chapter of the NAACP, a member of Dr. Paul’s constituency who has known Dr. Paul for 20 years, unequivocally dismissed charges that the Congressman was a racist and stated that the reason he was being attacked as a racist in the press was that he was a threat to the establishment (audio). Ron Paul is the only candidate from the two major parties who has consistently opposed the “War on Drugs,” which the NAACP has rightfully denounced as the last bastion of institutionalized racism in America. Dr. Paul is the only candidate from a major party who has vowed to issue a Presidential pardon to all nonviolent drug offenders (1:38 into this video), the disproportionate majority of whom are disadvantaged minorities unfairly targeted by law enforcement for the color of their skin (A black man’s view on Ron Paul being racist:Part 1, Part 2).

[..]

Ron Paul is NOT in league with Christian Reconstructionist theocrats who would make laws respecting an establishment a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Dr. Paul voted against the National Day of Prayer Resolution, a concurrent resolution to “recommend that United States’ leaders call for national days of prayer and urge all Americans to seek God through humble prayer and fasting.”

[…]

Ron Paul DID oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for exactly the reason quoted in the article: “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society.” Dr. Paul DOES NOT oppose civil rights and fully supported the Act’s repeal of Jim Crow laws, but he was deeply disturbed by the expansion of the power of the federal government over the behavior of private individuals.

Ron Paul DID co-sponsor a bill to overturn Roe v. Wade, for the same reason he voted against a Constitutional ban on abortion: he believes it to be out of the jurisdiction of the federal government.

A number of UNATTRIBUTED newsletters with Ron Paul’s name in the title did come out in the early 1990’s containing baldly racist and homophobic material. His response to that material is telling : “The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.” This can easily be confirmed by looking into publications and recordings directly from Ron Paul himself from both before and after the newsletters in question, including the following three-part recording of an educational program about juror’s rights from 1989, in which Dr. Paul expresses his reading of and admiration for staunch abolitionist Lysander Spooner while simultaneously defending the principle of jury nullification of unjust legislation: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Now, at last, Paul has finally given a comprehensive discussion of his views on immigration—in his latest book Liberty Defined, where he lists his positions on fifty different issues.

But what he—or the left-libertarian faction that seems to have his ear/ byline after the strange death of Rothbardian paleolibertarianism—actually says about the issue of immigration is a profound, and in fact tragic, disappointment.

The article concludes that “Ron Paul needs every vote he can get in his insurrectionary candidacy. In spurning immigration patriots, he has blundered.”

Finally, as to the claim

“…A3P webmaster Jamie Kelso. On top of being on the board of directors of A3P, former $cientologist, and high ranking Ron Paul organizer…”

As with the claim that Paul has had phone conferences with the A3P board of directors, I’d be interested in seeing more concrete evidence that Kelso is a high ranking organizer for Ron Paul.

Although he is currently running for president and serving in the US House as a Republican, Ron Paul ran for president in 1988 as a Libertarian and remains a life member of the Libertarian Party. In 2008 he endorsed Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin in the general election.

55 thoughts on “Did the Hacking of American Third Position Actually Reveal Current Links Between Ron Paul and White Nationalists, as the Hackers Claim?”

Smear tactics. Ron Paul is a threat to the powers that be, as such they must use their lackeys in the media to destroy the man politically. He was on the verge of winning Iowa. What happened? A solid barrange of vicious NEGATIVE media coverage for days on every news outlet. The bystander voters had to go elsewhere leading to his defeat. A win in Iowa could have kickstarted an underdogs campaign (little known former GA Gov. in ’76 for example. A Tri-Lateral Commission member BTW). But with the third place finish the masses are justified to find a “winner” elsewhere. A nice example of the media’s handi-work follows.

Last time I heard this A3P bunch has a POTUS Nom. Common sense will tell you these types don’t care much for the federal govt, the Federal Reserve or taxes for that govt, etc. things that Ron Paul’s beliefs come close to theirs, which might draw them to a rally and have them chip in a few Benjamins. As far as these photos floating around anyone who pays attention knows these candidates have their pictures taken with thousands of people and I doubt they know 1% of them ! As for the donations, in this million dollar arena against Wall St. Banker money backing your main opponent would YOU return a donation from, Satan himself, if he didn’t request a refund ? Heck no, a libertarian candidate needs every cent and then MUCH more to even be close to competing.

Paul is guilty of not proofreading the newsletter closely, but putting 5 kids thru college without govt handouts, I’m not sure I can harshly accuse the man for cashing the checks from the people renting his name.

I know most of you just can’t believe it, but the AP, Reuters, the major media and major local media outlets are owned and therefore controlled by elements of the Military Industrial Complex and all that that entails, to control and sway what the masses think on the so-called issues of the day!

And my way of thinking this hacking bunch is about as unlibertarian as you can get by removing others privacy! Live and LET LIVE !

I know most of you just can’t believe it, but the AP, Reuters, the major media and major local media outlets are owned and therefore controlled by elements of the Military Industrial Complex and all that that entails, to control and sway what the masses think on the so-called issues of the day!

But I understand this is a complex conversation. If anyone can write a coherent post justifying why RP’s racial opportunism (distinct from racism) is morally forgiveable, we’d be happy to publish it at politicalcontext.org. The problem is that racism matters — even if it doesn’t to “you,” it matters in building a multiracial coalition for positive change. And it’s not enough to say “xxx people of color support Paul”–you need to answer the race question _yourself_ instead of throwing it to the nearest convenient person of color. And any vitriolic or otherwise rude response is just more proof that such a coalition isn’t probable with many Paul supporters.

I can’t say I see any evidence of Paul’s “racial opportunism” besides the newsletters from 20 years ago, which Paul has denounced and disavowed.

You can be happy, Matt, that our corporate masters were well aware of Paul’s potential problems on race and abortion and how progressives could easily be manipulated into opposing him on that basis. This is why they put forth Paul as the token opposition rather than Gary Johnson, or allowing a progressive challenge to Obama in the Dem primaries.

But ultimately your innuendo about Paul’s supposed racism should not have any impact on reasonable people (if only American voters were “reasonable”).

Bottom line is unless you can provide proof that Paul is either racist or would govern as a racist then this is just another hit-piece without a shred of substance. These idiotic arguments parroted by so-called progressives are morally equivalent to saying that nobody should vote for Obama because he has associated with Bill Ayers. Or if Louis Farakhan or a black nationalist leader announces support for Obama then Obama should explicitly denounce Farakhan or the black nationalist. Such arguments were retarded in 2008, and they’re still retarded now.

@5 Far too many assumptions in your article that I disagree with to take on at this time.

For the purpose of this discussion, I’m more interested in whether anyone has been able to verify or definitively disprove (although the latter seems extremely difficult by definition) the hackers’ claims of Paul participating in phone conferences with A3P or of Kelso being high placed in Paul organizations.

I guess I can start with your claim that

his own rhetoric and the rhetoric he has signed his name to certainly indicate he would look the other way as whites murdered blacks, as children died of malnutrition and childhood diseases because of the Paul administration’s pushing to eliminate the social safety net

We have a profound disagreement on the socioeconomic effects of laissez faire economic policies, which I believe would be the exact opposite of what you think they would be.

These meetings allegedly occurred in a restaurant, on a regular basis. That’s not impossible to verify. I expect the DC papers are hard at work on this.

Different meetings than the alleged ones discussed here, which were supposedly phone conferences.

I expect that if the ones you are talking about actually took place, and Ron Paul was actually at them, New Republic and others would have already verified it and been trumpeting it by now. They certainly seem motivated, and the only original source for the claim that I know of is a highly unreliable one (Bill White).

I haven’t been able to find a date for the speech, but the uploads of the video I’ve found are recent (last month).

It’s actually a pretty good talk on the causes of the Civil War. Paul notes that every other country managed to eliminate slavery without a war, that slavery was not the only issue (and for the North, until 1863, not even the major issue) leading to the war, etc.

But, to channel Capozzi for a moment: Unless you’re running for small-town mayor in Mississippi, with no further political ambitions, speaking on video in front of a Confederate flag is probably contra-indicated from a PR standpoint.

I haven’t been able to find a date for the speech, but the uploads of the video I’ve found are recent (last month).

Does he look about the same age as now, or significantly younger?

It’s actually a pretty good talk on the causes of the Civil War. Paul notes that every other country managed to eliminate slavery without a war, that slavery was not the only issue (and for the North, until 1863, not even the major issue) leading to the war, etc.

Nitpick: Haiti also had a war. Otherwise correct. Many northern abolitionists opposed the war, especially in the beginning, and wanted the South out of the union. In fact they agitated for the northern/free states to secede first, leaving the confederate states plus the border slave states (and DC) as the US.

But, to channel Capozzi for a moment: Unless you’re running for small-town mayor in Mississippi, with no further political ambitions, speaking on video in front of a Confederate flag is probably contra-indicated from a PR standpoint.

True dat. If it was during the paleo years, the Rockwell-Rothbard wing did plenty of that. More recently not so much.

That video doesn’t do much for the smear-Ron-Paul cause. Ron Paul begins the video by praising a radical abolitionist. Then RP denounces violence as a means to reform institutions.

Unfortunately the sort of person who reads Little Green Foothills would probably just see the confed flag and find his prejudices confirmed. The readers of a blog like that are not known for reflection or questioning their presumptions and principles.

But there is a reason nobody is actually accusing Paul of being a racist. The best they can do is show him associating with racists.

From a rational perspective, I don’t understand how that’s a dealbreaker. If a racist wants to support Ron Paul and attend his meetings then, well, he’s welcome to do so. It’s a free country.

Unfortunately the sort of person who reads Little Green Foothills would probably just see the confed flag and find his prejudices confirmed. The readers of a blog like that are not known for reflection or questioning their presumptions and principles.

Unfortunately, imagery in politics is, if anything, more important than what you actually say.

If Obama gave a speech in front of a Soviet flag and talked about how vital farming and manufacturing are to our economy, do you think a lot of people might get stuck on the whole flag thing? I think they would.

But there is a reason nobody is actually accusing Paul of being a racist. The best they can do is show him associating with racists.

There’s different degrees of associating. Having your picture taken with a random supporter, as happens multiple times every day, and having it later turn out that he is Don Black of Stormfront infamy is one thing. Participating in phone conferences with the board of A3P would be something else, if someone actually proves it to be true instead of dumping a landfill full of data and asserting that it’s somewhere in there.

If, say, Jesse Benton made a regular habit of appearing in public in an SS uniform, that would be a problem, even if he never said a single racist word.

Consider for example what the Mississippi State Convention said about the matter at the time:

Mississippi
[Copied by Justin Sanders from “Journal of the State Convention”, (Jackson, MS: E. Barksdale, State Printer, 1861), pp. 86-88]
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.

The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.

The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.

It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.

It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.

It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.

It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.

Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.

Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.

Of course, Southern apologist go on at great length to deny the obvious. It is, after all, modestly embarrassing to note the truth, namely that your ancestors got a significant part of the total population of the United States killed in order to preserve their right to fornicate 12 year old slave girls…and 11 year old slave boys.

@13 For the benefit of confused readers, Little Green Footballs is the conservative web site that went over approximately to the positions that global warming deniers are wrong and dangerous, truthers are crazy, and birthers need their heads examined.

@17 that is not a declaration of war. The North started the war over secession. It is fair to say the.secession was about slavery, but there can be no doubt that the North’s aggressive war was about quashing secession

Yes George, LGF has some laudable tendencies, but that community was notorious for being among the most mindless and bigoted propagandists/warmongers of the Bush presidency. The sort of ad hominem reasoning used by the smear-Paul crowd is normal everyday reasoning at that blog.

That doesn’t make the Civil War about slavery, any more than it makes the Holocaust about Passover seders.

The Nazis wouldn’t have changed their mind about killing all the Jews if all a confab of rabbis had got together and decided to do away with passover.

Nor would Lincoln have said “okay, well, secede then, I don’t care” if secession had been about one of the other causes of southern disaffection (the protective tariff being a big one).

This was something that Lincoln was very, very clear on:

“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” — first inaugural address, 1861

“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.” — letter to Horace Greeley, 1862

Lincoln waited until nearly two years into the war to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which he framed entirely as a military measure and which did not extend to states under Union control.

The notion that the war itself was “about slavery” is propagandistic revisionism.

Little Green Footballs is the conservative web site that went over approximately to the positions that global warming deniers are wrong and dangerous, truthers are crazy, and birthers need their heads examined.

I agree about birthers. My views on the other two subjects are more nuanced.

your ancestors got a significant part of the total population of the United States killed in order to preserve their right to fornicate 12 year old slave girls…and 11 year old slave boys.

For anyone reading who doesn’t know already, they were not my ancestors (I was born in the USSR), but why do you think the majority of southerners – mostly poor whites and even some non-whites – agreed to fight on the side of the south? After all they owned no slaves, and were extremely unlikely to ever own slaves.

On the other side, many rank and file union troops couldn’t have cared less about ending slavery, and some would have preferred to keep it legal.

The proclamations of the 1% of their day – on either side – had little to do with what the 99% of the time thought or why they did what they did.

Finally, had the south won the war (not a civil war – I highly doubt the confederates had any interest at all in occupying New York or Boston), how long could they have preserved slavery in the absence of fugitive slave laws in the north, and in the face of moral opposition from their European markets for cotton? After all, the Europeans did not intervene on the southern side for that reason.

that is not a declaration of war. The North started the war over secession. It is fair to say the.secession was about slavery, but there can be no doubt that the North’s aggressive war was about quashing secession

Good point. Of course the southerner elites would have preferred to secede without war.

Yes, secession was about slavery, almost entirely, as the secession ordinances, etc. of the various states makes clear.

There were other issues, including tariffs. And there was in fact a long-lived movement for secession before it actually happened, based on any number of reasons. But slavery was the big public justification.

Nonetheless, the war was not about slavery.

The war began when the North insisted on maintaining its military posts in a new country, invaded Charleston Harbor with a naval force to re-supply one of those posts, then called out its militia, built a new standing army (initially five times the size of the pre-war army and eventually much, much larger than that), and invaded the south.

Absent those thing, there would have been no war; and the North did not do those things to eliminate slavery; it did those things to crush secession. No amount of revising will change that simple fact.

The notion that the war itself was “about slavery” is propagandistic revisionism.

Not if you are a blood thirsty Yankee that derives pleasure from killing people while claiming it to be a moral cause – as if black people were treated as equals in the north.

I remember that when Richmond was ordered by the feds to implement bussing, a handful of crackers moved out of the city to the burbs where there were fewer black people.

When Boston was ordered to implement bussing a few years later, the enlightened and non-racist white boys there rioted.

The thing is that in this day and age, when many black people are “migrating” back to the south, living in the south means one is an inbred ignorant racist to many educated and enlightened northerners.

Northerners were crazy 150 years ago and apparently many of them are still crazy after all these years.

How ironic that the first official legal recognition of chattel slavery as a legal institution was in Massachusetts.

Paulie #25 asks some good questions. The average non-slavery owning southerner fought for the same reason American youth joins and fights today: because the community leaders have whipped up patriotism against an enemy.
We saw it in Korea, for instance. The average GI shivering at the Choisin Reservoir was not a capitalist in the sense he owned stock, but he was there fighting the godless communists who would take over America unless he killed a whole bunch of yellow people.
Yes, the foundation of the Southern economy was built on slavery and those who didn’t own slaves thought they benefitted from it too.
In many places, a far greater majority leased slaves for temporary jobs around the farm or
business but could legitimately claim “I didn’t own one slave.” Be as it may, why did the average Johnny Reb sign up and, for a great many, sacrifice life and limb for “the cause?”
I don’t think it was to save 10 cents for the tariff on granny’s skillet. No, they were whipped into joining because the community’s orators told them Abe Lincoln and the Black Republicans would storm through their state, burning their houses, destroying their farms, (used euphemisms) rape their women, impoverish their children. They used all the propaganda techiniques every ruling class has used to gin up military fervor against its opponents. In point of fact, Lincoln’s 75,000 volunteers would have gone to state capitols and tried to arrest a relative handful of rebel legislators, not devasted eleven states of the Confederacy.

From a libertarian stand point I’d say Lincoln was indeed horrible in his suspension of habeus corpus and his enforcement of conscription. But the Confederacy was wrong in its secession – which regardless of the apologists was to allow it to continue . So even though the underlying motivation of the North to enter into War was for economic domination and continued access to resources in the South – ultimately they were still right to fight against secession as the ultimate consequence was ending the institution of slavery – and who knows, perhaps avoided an apartheid state that would have continued its anti-liberty policies into the 20th Century. I think it’s important to mention of the Free Soil Party – as these were among the ones that truly pressed an abolitionist agenda into the political discussion of the day – all through by electing a minority of Congress people – kind of an inspirational example towards the good third parties can in fact do – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Soil_Party

Without fugitive slave laws, and with the growing international pressure against slavery, it would have ended quickly even if they south had successfully seceded.

With the US split in two, it’s unlikely US imperialism would have been nearly as much of a factor in the last 100+ years. And without US intervention in WW1, it is far less likely that Hitler, Stalin or Mao would ever have eventually come to power, since the war was coming to a negotiated end prior to the US tipping the scales. It was the post-war sanctions against Germany that made Hitler’s rise possible. Quite possibly, it was the protraction of the war that allowed the Bolsheviks to seize power as well.

We did have an apartheid state in the US well into the 20th century. It didn’t end until the 1960s.

Paulie #34, it would certainly make an interesting “alternative history” novel to project what would have happened had South Carolina hotheads refrained from firing on Ft. Sumter. Let it be re-provisioned to its heart content and wait for Lincoln to make the first belligerent move.

@36 Part of the problem for the Southerners was that Ft. Sumter was a customs collection point for the enforcement of the tariff.

per wikipedia

The Panic of 1857 was blamed by many former Whigs and industrialists on the free trade policy of the 1857 law. Legislators such as Justin Morrill and economist Henry Carey began to push for a restoration of the Whig American System program of protective tariffs. The new Republican Party soon adopted many of the Whig positions. War was at hand and the Union urgently needed revenues. Congress passed, without the Southern Democrats opposition (they had all left by then), the Morrill Tariff and it was signed by Democratic President James Buchanan in early March 1861. It took effect a few weeks before the war began on April 12, 1861, and was not collected in the South. The Confederate States of America (CSA) passed its own tariff of about 15% on most items, including many items that previously were duty-free from the North. Previously tariffs between states were prohibited. Despite their belief that the tariffs set by the Confederacy would support much of their government just as it had the nearly all of the United States Government before. The anticipated Confederate tariff revenue never appeared as the Union Navy blockaded their ports and U.S. Army restricted their trade with the Northern states.

For a book on 1861 rates see: “Tariff, or, rates of duties payable on goods… 1861″: Elias Dayton Ogden

As the American Civil War became a major conflict, the United States Government needed vast new revenues. The Morrill Tariff as a major source of customs revenue was revised upward twice more between 1861 and 1862. With the low-tariff southerners gone, the Republican-controlled Congress doubled and tripled the rates on imported European goods, which topped out at 49 percent in 1868.

Congress has no more power to make a slave, than to make a king. We have assembled in conventions as a union of freemen, for the sake of freedom, forgetting all past political differences in a common resolve to maintain the rights of free labor, against the aggressions of the slave power, and to secure free soil for a free people.

The free grant to actual settlers of reasonable portions of the public lands, under suitable limitations, is a wise and just public policy. Let the soil of our extensive domains be ever kept free for the hardy pioneers of our own land, and the oppressed and banished of other lands, seeking homes of comfort and fields of enterprise in the new world.

We the people, here assembled, remembering the example of our fathers in the days of the first declaration of independence, do now plant ourselves on the national platform of freedom. We will inscribe on our banner ”Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men“, and under it will fight on, and fight ever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions.

The allegation about Ron Paul meeting with neo-Nazi leaders in restaurants, alluded to by GP, came from Bill White, a notorius Nazi and serial liar. Mr White made this claim in 2008, and it has never been verified.

I think the restaurant “meetings” are plausible. Some kind of paleo speaker/lunch meeting. Think about it as a Pat Buchanan oriented sort of thing.

Some Paul staff member (s) are pretty much regulars. Paul has been there (for some particular speaker.) It isn’t closed, and the “White Power” folks come too–but probably leave their white sheets or nazi armbands at home.

Plausible? Perhaps. But where is the proof, or even evidence, other than one known prevaricating neo-nazi attention whore?

I know that there are some reporters out there who are motivated to dig up dirt on Ron Paul, so I’d be very surprised if they hadn’t tried to confirm this already. The fact that no story has come out with further confirmation leads me to strongly suspect that no such confirmation exists to be found.

The majority of people didn’t own slaves, but this was America, and poor folks from the hills did sometimes become wealthy planters. The claim that most Southerners were unlikely to ever be able to afford even one slave (nor their children?) doesn’t mean they didn’t weren’t willing to defend that opportunity.

Further, worries about free blacks shouldn’t be dismissed. Still, Unionist sentiment was greater in areas where there were few slaves.

Second, in the border states, they left the Union directly over “states’ rights.” Concretely, they were not willing to participate in a war against the states that did leave. Of course, the option to leave later if “necessary” was probably important because of worries about slavery. In other words, if the paranoid fears to the deep south turned out to be right, they could always leave later–except the Unionists insisted on fighting.

As others have pointed out, the dominant reason for the invasion by the North was to maintain the Union rather than to fight slavery.

All that said, I think it is a mistake for Ron Paul (or any libertarian or libertarianish) politician to try to fight the civil war again. Slavery was really bad. War is really bad. Thank the Lord that Slavery ended by the end of the Civil War. We can’t go back in time and come up with some better way to solve past problems. Where do we go from here?

Further, worries about free blacks shouldn’t be dismissed. Still, Unionist sentiment was greater in areas where there were few slaves.

Second, in the border states, they left the Union directly over “states’ rights.” Concretely, they were not willing to participate in a war against the states that did leave. Of course, the option to leave later if “necessary” was probably important because of worries about slavery. In other words, if the paranoid fears to the deep south turned out to be right, they could always leave later–except the Unionists insisted on fighting.

As others have pointed out, the dominant reason for the invasion by the North was to maintain the Union rather than to fight slavery.

All that said, I think it is a mistake for Ron Paul (or any libertarian or libertarianish) politician to try to fight the civil war again. Slavery was really bad. War is really bad. Thank the Lord that Slavery ended by the end of the Civil War. We can’t go back in time and come up with some better way to solve past problems. Where do we go from here?

I hate to keep beating this drum, but it really seems to me that the issue has to be: do you think that (in an alternate universe in which he was elected) a President Paul would (a) pursue policies motivated by racial animus or (b) appoint Cabinet members who would pursue such policies on their own? If the answer is “yes,” then I think you have every reason to go on the offensive against the Paul campaign; if it’s “no,” then I wonder about the persistence of this conversation.

I’m not sure your question, as written, captures all the implications.

I believe that if Paul was elected president, significant numbers of people would become less free, and/or see new barriers to their becoming more free, as a result.

For example, as a congresscritter, he has introduced and sponsored legislation to constructively repeal the Full Faith and Credit and Equal Protection clauses of the Constitution, and has persisted in imagining a federal power to regulate immigration, even though said power is not only absent from, but specifically prohibited in, the Constitution.

Presumably as president he would remain true to those positions and at least allow, and likely actively defend, once again for example, Texas un-marrying married couples and Alabama beating down people thought to have crossed imaginary lines without permission.

The vehemently anti-war group is organizing a slew of events this weekend in opposition to the United States’ Israel
policy, to coincide with the annual conference of the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee.

Ahead of the protests, a Code Pink activist
suggested the group — at least when it comes to Israel — is actually
on the same page as Paul, a libertarian and one of the first candidates
to enter the race for the GOP presidential nomination.

If that is a reply to 48, just because something is classified under right wing minor parties (in this case due to A3P) that does not mean you should post about completely different right wing minor parties (conservative party usa) out of the blue on the comment thread.

i>That doesn’t make the Civil War about slavery, yet your two preceding statements declare the opposite. any more than it makes the Holocaust about Passover seders.
that’s more like half an amoeba to oranges. not even apples to orange.

That doesn’t make the Civil War about slavery,
yet your two preceding statements declare the opposite.any more than it makes the Holocaust about Passover seders.
that’s more like half an amoeba to oranges. not even apples to orange.